Howlin' Wolf: A Blues Legend With An Earthy Sound
Howlin' Wolf's masters from the Chess label have just been released on a four-disc set titled Smokestack Lightning: The Complete Chess Masters 1931-1960.When your father has worked a good piece of...
View ArticleJames Burton: The Teen Who Invented American Guitar
What were you doing when you were 16?When he was 16, James Burton was inventing the American guitar. He'd been born in Dubberly, La., in 1939, and was apparently self-taught on his instrument. At 15,...
View ArticleThe Untold Story Of Singer Bobby Charles
When he was around 13, Robert Charles Guidry began singing with a band around his hometown of Abbeville, La., deep in the Cajun swamps. The group played Cajun and country music and, after he passed...
View ArticleAutosalvage: The Psychedelic Band That Vanished
A little over 10 years ago, a friend with a small record company in England called me and asked if I wanted to do liner notes for an album he was re-releasing. When he told me it was the Autosalvage...
View ArticleHarmony, Teenagers And 'The Complete Story Of Doo-Wop'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UZhPKydKcYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNUMpWp1KsY
View ArticleThe Forgotten Story Of Memphis' American Studios
Memphis has been a music town since anyone can remember, and it's had places to record that music since there have been records. Some of its studios — Sun, Stax and Hi — are well-known, but American...
View ArticleOut Of Industrial Wasteland, The English Beat Was Born
In 1978, it seemed that every kid in Britain wanted to be in a punk band. But in Birmingham, that blighted industrial scar in the middle of the island, there wasn't much punk to be seen. The oasis was...
View ArticleMore Than This: The 'Complete' Roxy Music
Roxy Music's eight studio albums have just been collected in one box set, titled The Complete Studio Recordings 1972-1982.Roxy Music is the only band I can think of that had an oboe player in it, and...
View ArticleThe Big Man Behind 'Shake, Rattle And Roll'
Big Joe Turner's hardest-hitting singles have been collected on a new compilation, titled Big Joe Turner Rocks.Here's how it would work, night after night in Kansas City. The band onstage would start a...
View ArticleThe Insect Trust: An American Band Deconstructed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXPkG8M0fT4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NLr7XSHrgs
View ArticleTurning Up The Volume On The Electric Blues
Blues is so much a part of the fabric of American music and American culture — not only as a defined musical form, but also as a springboard for all kinds of creativity — that it seems crazy to try to...
View ArticleThe Unsung Pioneer Of Louisiana Swamp-Pop
Southern Louisiana in the early 1960s was a hotbed of musical creativity among youngsters who'd been raised listening to French-language country music and Fats Domino. They combined those — and other —...
View ArticleAretha Franklin Before Atlantic: The Columbia Years
Aretha Franklin made her first record when she was 14, singing some gospel standards in the church of her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, an easygoing Detroit pastor who was friends with Martin Luther King...
View ArticleThe Moving Sidewalks: Where The British Invasion Met Texas Blues
There must be something in the water — or the beer — in Texas that caused the huge eruption of garage bands and psychedelic bands in the mid-1960s, because there sure were a lot of them, and their...
View ArticleJohnny Cash's Columbia Catalog Out Now — As A 64-Disc Box Set
In 1955, John R. Cash was a sometime auto mechanic, sometime appliance salesman who liked to play the guitar and sing, mostly gospel songs. The "R" in his name didn't stand for anything — and, in fact,...
View ArticleThe Left Banke: A '60s Teenage Band With Two Hits
If you were a New York teenager who played an instrument and wanted to be in a band, and all of a sudden British groups were coming to town and attracting rioting mobs of teenage girls, you might feel...
View ArticleThe Story Of The Chitlin' Circuit's Great Performers
During the years before the Civil Rights movement got underway, segregated American cities helped give birth to a touring circuit that provided employment for hundreds of black musicians and...
View ArticleDore: The Little Studio That Could (Produce Hits)
Someday, some genius is going to do a Mad Men-type show about the little record labels of the late 1950s. Yes, I'll happily serve as a consultant.My first suggestion is that the L.A. part be set in...
View ArticleLong Live The Smiths''Complete Works'
When Steven Patrick Morrissey was 13, he was watching The Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC rock television show, when the New York Dolls came on. Later, he called it "my first real emotional experience."...
View ArticleA Studio On The Road To 'Fame' For Soul Musicians
Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill were a couple of Alabama boys in their teens when they started writing songs. At first, the only place they had to record was in a room in the back of the Trailways bus...
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